Affective Systems

Seminar, part of the conference program of DEAF04.

kurort prototype

11

Nov 2004

15:00 to
18:00

The seminar aims to give an idea of the state of the art
in affective systems by presenting both theoretical and
experimental results from different disciplines. A moderated
discussion with authors and creators will deal with the
assumptions, ambitions and approaches that underpin their
work.

Researchers and experimenters in various disciplines
are trying to equip machines with some understanding of
subtext and context of interaction, rather than only literal
commands and feedback. This requires the machine to be able
to perceive and reason about emotional cues in human interaction,
as in intonation, facial expression and body language, and
to form expectations of how its own behavior might affect
the human. Conversely, given an adequate internal representation
for that purpose, machines could perhaps be made to express
emotions in and of themselves. Would such efforts really
help improve the quality of human-machine interaction? And
could similar techniques be applied in other areas, such
as simulation experiments in the social sciences, or synthetic
character and narrative generation in the interactive arts?